Roundabout Momentum

“Although America’s white rock ‘n’ rollers lacked the musical sophistication found in jazz, they had a pretty clear idea of where they stood in the cultural hierarchy. Carl Perkins put it best when he said: ‘Rockabilly’s simple music but it’s not that easy to play.’ By this light, the Beatles’s true significance is not that they invented rock ‘n’ roll, or brought it to a level of distinction never before achieved by Afro-American music, or any of the other ridiculous claims made in their name. Instead, the Beatles’ significance is that, in their charmingly flippant way, they began the process by which popular music would achieve an elevated cultural status for reasons that have little or nothing to do with Afro-American musical quality” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 175-176).